Mourning (2011)

MOURNING  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Morteza Farshbaf
    Kiomars Giti, Sharareh Pasha, Amir Hossein Maleki
An Iranian road movie about a mute couple and their newly orphaned nephew in an SUV on their way to Tehran. The boy's parents have just died in a car wreck, and a lot of the movie is a conversation - an argument, really - between the aunt and uncle, in sign, over who should take responsibility for the kid. It's not the Iran you see on the evening news. It's the Iran of back roads, gravel quarries, mechanical breakdowns and little roadside stores where a kid can buy a coke. In other words, the Iran that's just like everywhere else. The fact that the bickering couple look completely ordinary, and an incidental narrative that ends before anything's really resolved, enhances the sense that what you're watching is pretty close to real life. It leaves you wondering what will happen next. That's pretty close to real life, too.